Does the Conduct of the Guilty Dictate our Rights?
The essence of the “weapon of choice” argument is that, because criminals and madmen use these guns to commit crimes, the law- abiding must give them up. But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow.
By criminalizing an act that is not wrong in itself the purchase and sale of a firearm the ban violates the presumption of innocence, the principle that insures that government honors the liberty of its citizens until their deeds convict them. By completely banning the sale of assault weapons to prevent crime before it occurs, the law effectively and irrebuttably presumes that all who want such a weapon are no better than murderers or madmen, forever ineligible to acquire these firearms.
Obviously, a law which restricts the liberty of the innocent because of the behavior of the guilty, that rests on principle that the conduct of criminals dictates the scope of liberty the law will allow to the rest of society, in no sense “fights” crime. It is, instead, a capitulation to crime, born of a society in full-bore retreat from crime, a society fearful of and desperately accommodating itself to crime.
~Jeff Snyder, August 25, 1994, The Washington Times, page A1, “Who’s Under Assault in the Assault Weapon Ban?”
Jeff Snyder, writing for The Washington Times in 1994, articulated a profound insight regarding the nature of liberty and the presumption of innocence. In addressing the logic of gun control, Snyder observed that to ban weapons because criminals misuse them is to tell the innocent that “their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless.” This creates a society where the scope of freedom is dictated by the lowest common denominator of morality. Snyder correctly identifies this not as a safety measure, but as a “capitulation to crime,” a retreat born of fear. However, this immoral reversal of the burden of proof—where the innocent are preemptively treated as suspects—has metastasized far beyond the Second Amendment. It has infected the corporate world, our medical systems, and even the governance of the family home.
At the heart of this issue is the violation of the presumption of innocence, a natural right derived from the Logos—the universal, divine reason that orders the cosmos and the individual mind. When a government bans an object or an action that is not inherently wrong (like the purchase of a firearm) to prevent a potential crime, it “irrebuttably presumes that all who want such a weapon are no better than murderers or madmen.” This is a legislative assertion that the individual cannot be trusted with their own agency. It replaces the internal moral compass of the citizen with the external, coercive control of the State. It is the hallmark of a system that views the individual not as a sovereign creation capable of self-governance, but as a latent biological hazard that must be managed by technocratic elites.
This dynamic represents a war between worldly ethos and the internalized Logos. As explored in previous articles, Logos vs the World’s Ethos, Christ vs Anti-Christ and Worldly Ethos and the Reversal of the Burden of Proof, worldly ethos relies on credentials, titles, and external authorities to establish truth. In contrast, Logos relies on objective truth and the internal coherence of the individual. When the state imposes preemptive restrictions, it is asserting that its external ethos is superior to the individual’s internal Logos. The state acts as the “Anti-Christ” structure, demanding submission to its authority regardless of the individual’s actual moral standing. It demands we prove we are not dangerous, rather than the state proving we have done harm.
We see this identical tyranny of the “lowest common denominator” in corporate policy, for example, the infantilizing demand for “doctor’s notes.” Consider an employee who possesses sophrosyne—a classical Greek concept denoting soundness of mind, self-control, and temperance. This individual, attuned to the Logos, possesses deep self-knowledge. They know their body intimately. When they wake up ill, their internal diagnostic tools are sufficient to determine that they need rest. They are operating in truth. However, the corporate structure, operating on worldly ethos, rejects this internal knowledge. It demands an external authority—a doctor—to validate the reality that the individual already knows.
By requiring a doctor’s note, the corporation is applying Snyder’s logic of the “weapon of choice” to the human body. Because some employees lie and game the system to get a day off, the honest employee must be treated as a liar by default. The policy declares that the honest employee’s rights and dignity “depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless.” The employee is forced to pay a “tax” on their honesty—in the form of co-pays, travel time, and exposure to other sick people at a clinic—merely to prove they are not “gaming the system.” Moreover, this surrender of agency often extends to the cure itself; the individual is presumed incapable of navigating their own recovery through self-knowledge, compelled instead to adopt the external doctor’s “authoritative” advice as the only valid passport back to the workplace. It is a punishment of the innocent to accommodate the behavior of the deceitful and/or the less responsible who don’t know themselves very well.
This reliance on external ethos does damage to the human soul. When an individual is constantly told that their own self-perception is invalid without a stamp of approval from an external “expert,” they begin to lose faith in their own judgment. They disconnect from the Logos. We are training people to believe that they cannot know they are sick until a person in a white coat tells them they are sick. It is a form of psychological conditioning that strips the individual of their autonomy, rendering them dependent on systemic validation for even the most basic biological realities.
This poisonous philosophy inevitably trickles down into the family system, arguably the most crucial unit of governance. Parents who adopt the “preemptive ban” mentality often govern through suspicion rather than trust. If a parent restricts the liberty of a responsible child because of what “other kids might do” or because of a general fear of the world, they are teaching that child that their personal integrity does not matter. They are teaching the child that they are defined by the potential sins of others, not by their own adherence to the Good. This creates a home environment of surveillance rather than one of moral development.
True family governance, rooted in a Logocentric Christian philosophy, requires teaching the child to internalize the law. It involves raising a child to have an internal locus of control by training them in Logocentric based morality so that they do not require constant external policing. Just as Snyder argues that the law must honor the liberty of citizens “until their deeds convict them,” parents must honor the growing agency of the child. Treating a child as a “pre-criminal” stifles the development of their conscience, leaving them with no internal defense against the world when the external controls are eventually removed.
Snyder’s ultimate conclusion is that a society which restricts the innocent because of the guilty is a society “in full-bore retreat.” It is a society that has lost the will to distinguish between the man of peace and the man of violence, between the honest worker and the slothful liar. By treating everyone as a suspect, the system admits it has no capacity for discernment. It is a lazy, bureaucratic “ethos” that seeks to manage humanity like cattle rather than engage with humans as moral agents.
To reclaim our natural rights, we must reject this reversal of the burden of proof in every aspect of our lives. Whether facing a gun ban, a corporate policy, or a family dispute, we must assert the primacy of the individual unit of analysis. We must stand on the principle that our liberty is defined by our own relationship with the Logos—our own conduct, our own self-knowledge, and our own integrity—and not by the “conduct of the lawless.” To accept anything less is to accept a timeline where we are forever presumed guilty, waiting for permission to live.
Did you enjoy the article? Show your appreciation and buy me a coffee:
Bitcoin: bc1qmevs7evjxx2f3asapytt8jv8vt0et5q0tkct32
Doge: DBLkU7R4fd9VsMKimi7X8EtMnDJPUdnWrZ
XRP: r4pwVyTu2UwpcM7ZXavt98AgFXRLre52aj
POL: 0xEf62e7C4Eaf72504de70f28CDf43D1b382c8263F
THE UNITY PROCESS: I’ve created an integrative methodology called the Unity Process, which combines the philosophy of Natural Law, the Trivium Method, Socratic Questioning, Jungian shadow work, and Meridian Tapping—into an easy to use system that allows people to process their emotional upsets, work through trauma, correct poor thinking, discover meaning, set healthy boundaries, refine their viewpoints, and to achieve a positive focus. Read my philosophical treatise, “The Logocentric Christian”, to learn more about how Greek philosophy, the law of identity, the law of non-contradiction, the law of reason, and Jesus of Nazareth all connect together.
